Law Research Assistant Guide to the Law Library

Due to subscription and licensing agreements, certain library resources are restricted to UC faculty, staff, and currently enrolled students. Some of these databases are available to the entire University of Cincinnati community. Others are restricted to the College of Law.

Note that these are indexes, not full-text sources. The index will give you the citation to an article which you would then need to retrieve if you wanted to review the full-text. There may be some overlap in coverage by the indexes but each covers some periodicals that the others do not.

When looking for journal articles, be sure and check OneSearch.

• For OneSearch, search for the journal, not the specific article (do not use Bluebook abbreviations).
• Once you find the database that the journal is in, then search for the specific article.
• If the article is unavailable through the above methods, and you need to request an article through Interlibrary Loan, fill out the ILL Form for Articles. The Law Library does not use ILLIAD at this time. Articles are usually sent electronically within a week of a request but some libraries still send articles by US mail. These articles may take up to two weeks or more to arrive. If we place an ILL request for an article that arrives by e-mail, it will be forwarded to your e-mail address. Articles that arrive through the US mail can be picked up at the Circulation Desk.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a division of the Library of Congress. They produce analytical, non-partisan reports on topics of interest to members of Congress. While they do not maintain a public website for dissemination of these reports, there are a number of free and subscription sites where you can find CRS reports. You can also request copies from your Congressional Representative.

Tax Specific CRS Reports are also available on:

If writing or cite checking about an interdisciplinary topic, you may need to check non-legal periodicals. The sources that you would check will differ depending on the topic chosen. You may find it helpful to check out the subject guides developed by a UC librarian who specializes in that area. Visit our http://guides.libraries.uc.edu/ page to view all subject guides.

The following are some selected, general resources for non-legal periodicals.

JSTOR

JSTOR includes archives of over 1,000 leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs.